Game on!

[Voicecoil]

I just completed a panel. Was going to offer it for sale but decided to use it on my own machine. The way i do the ventilation/cooling is filter on side bottom and fan on side top opposite side.

Ahhh, so you're using your fan in sucking mode I guess?? Mine's blowing into the enclosure, but the airflow route must be similar. I always tend to go for blowing into the enclosure in equipment I've designed in the past as it's marginally better dust-wise to have the enclosure slightly pressurised, though with a well sealed box like these control enclosures it won't make any difference at all.

Same as you i used the AXBB-E and although it works good the way they designed it makes wiring a bit complicated....i am currently working on a better solution for that. Another thing i am working on is to make wiring to the sensor plugs easier and faster. Just thought this might give you some ideas for your next one :)

Aye, the enormous number of screw terminals is a PITA - if I were making even just a few units I'd lay out my own breakout PCB with onboard connectors and interface to something like the UC400ETH via some flat cables.

[ericks]

Yes i basically suck the rising heat out of the box. Busy making a breakout board/terminal board/plc for the axbb-e. Problem is my spare time is limited atm. I found the connections to the stepper drives an issue due to the lack of 5V0 terminals on the AXBB-E. But i still like the unit :)

[Voicecoil]

Good job by the way!!

Cheers! it was quite a job cramming it all into a 380x380x200 box, but having had one kindly donated by Nealieboyee it was worth the effort.

[Voicecoil]

So I've finally got all axes working. Next job was to square up the gantry; first I got it roughly right by eye and some shoving/using the Y motors independently, then fine trimmed it with the eccentric bushings on the carriage plates using a fine DTI and a large square left by my late father. It's true to about 10u now

[Neale]

Does the software/motion controller you are using support proper gantry homing/squaring? I'm wondering because you talk about mechanical adjustments but I assume you will still be at the mercy of the homing routine at the start of any cutting session?

[paulus.v]

Does the software/motion controller you are using support proper gantry homing/squaring? I'm wondering because you talk about mechanical adjustments but I assume you will still be at the mercy of the homing routine at the start of any cutting session?

What do you mean by proper gantry squaring?
Both Mach3 and UCCNC have a good working gantry squaring routine. At homing both axes will move together until one axis will reach the home sensor, then that axis will stop and the other will continue until it will also reach its home sensor. After this, both axes will move back off the sensors and the homing/squaring is finished..
I think it is also possible , with a macro, to add an offset distance between the sensors if it is difficult to adjust the sensors distance for the gantry squaring.

[Neale]

That's pretty much what I mean by proper gantry squaring - the software understands the hardware configuration and does the right thing with both ends of the gantry. The main thing that prompted my question was that the previous post described very accurate mechanical squaring but I wasn't sure how that tied into the software-initiated homing which would be used for normal operation.

I've been using Mach3 for a few years now but I wasn't aware that it understood the concept of master-slave axes. I use Mach3 with a CSMIO-IP/M and it's the motion controller firmware that takes over the homing function from Mach3. Unfortunately that firmware does not include the ability to square a gantry during homing - in effect, it just runs both master and slave in synchronism and you have to find another way to square the gantry. In fact (as someone pointed out on this forum a while ago) you can go into the CSMIO config menu and disable slaving. I then use a specific homing macro that homes X and A simultaneously; both ends of the gantry move to their home position but you do need to separately adjust the two homing sensors so that the gantry is square when it is homed. Once homed, you reconfigure slaving and it all works fine from that point on. Assuming that you don't hit e-stop or that anything serious happens, the gantry retains its "squareness" for the rest of the session, even if rehomed the usual way.

However, you have made me think a little more about this, and I suspect that because I separate X and A for homing, I could use the Mach3 homing offset parameter on A to provide the squaring correction more easily than trying to tweak a proximity sensor. I'll look into that.

[Voicecoil]

What do you mean by proper gantry squaring?
Both Mach3 and UCCNC have a good working gantry squaring routine. At homing both axes will move together until one axis will reach the home sensor, then that axis will stop and the other will continue until it will also reach its home sensor. After this, both axes will move back off the sensors and the homing/squaring is finished..
I think it is also possible , with a macro, to add an offset distance between the sensors if it is difficult to adjust the sensors distance for the gantry squaring.

Cheers for that Paulus - you've saved me digging through the UCCNC manual to find out if it does it!

[Neale]

Every time I have to work around a deficiency in my setup I start reading the UCCNC manuals... I reckon that a UC300ETH/UB1 combination would be a drop-in replacement for my IP/M, which is a great piece of hardware let down by the software around it. I spotted that UCCNC does proper gantry squaring, although I haven't bothered to chase down exactly how. Would have to replace the MPG as well as I couldn't live without one of those.

Be interested to hear how you get on with UCCNC. At least it's a supported piece of software, unlike Mach3!

[AndyUK]

Be interested to hear how you get on with UCCNC. At least it's a supported piece of software, unlike Mach3!

This is what pushed me towards UCCNC rather than Mach3 - and the horror reports from Mach4.

I'm slightly worried however by the multiple updates to UCCNC which are released without any accompanying release notes or change history. :( Feels like the developers are starting to get into some bad habits.